the piece was installed on the grounds of the Stedelijk Museum, in Amster- dam.) A Serra proposal for the exterior of the Centre Pompidou, in Paris, also got turned down, because Renzo Piano, one of the building's archi tects, con- sidered it intrusive. Serra talked him- self out of what would have been the biggest sculptural commission of the decade, for the Pennsylvania Avenue Redevelopment Corporation, in Wash- ington, D.C. He clashed repeatedly with Robert Venturi, the architect in charge. When Serra was shown a wa- tercolor rendering of two pylons de- signed by Venturi with stars and stripes on them, he said there might just as well be a swastika and an eagle on top; he was fired soon afterward. In 1971, a two-part prop sculpture by Serra fell while it was being taken down at the Walker Art Center, in Min- neapolis, pinning a workman under- neath. The workman died on the way to the hospital. At the trial that followed, responsibility for the accident was as- signed to the fabricator, for not following the design specifications, and to the rig- ging crew, which had ignored the engi- neer's written instructions, because the foreman couldn't read. Industrial acci- dents happen all the time, of course. No- body had blamed Alexander Calder when a piece fell off a sculpture of his that was being installed at Princeton in 1970, killing two workmen, but Serràs reputation for arrogant and aggressive behavior led a number of people to con- demn him over the incident. "I was ha- rassed, ridiculed, disgraced, and was told by ffiends, other artists, museum direc- tors, critics, and dealers to stop working," he said. Serra was devastated by the trag- edy and its aftermath. "It sent me into analysis for eight years," he said, "and it put me on the road. I went to Europe and started building there." F or a man who was often his own worst enemy, he could inspire and reciprocate deep loyalty. When Bob Smithson died in a small-plane crash, in 1973, at the age of thirty-four, Serra went out to Texas and helped Nancy Holt finish ' arillo Ramp," the piece Smithson had been working on at the time He did a lot to further the careers of Philip Glass and the filmmaker Mi- chael Snow, arranging concerts and .... .: .;:, ,7 . . 'J\':!f': -."."',' "1--:: '". .Jt ' )'; 'i ' :-: . . lP.;:;:' :t? . ';. : . ,,(. .. '..; 'i, ':,":/: ,':,'':< :,', L:, "+f ,:\i )')f. ;;','''\; ;X'''',' . ;.:. . /:; .' #;::?t; .: screenings for them in Europe; it was Glass, in turn, who introduced Serra to Cape Breton Island, where they both have been going since the early seven- ties. (""What I really like about Nova Scotia is the light," Serra says. "North- ern light is like light after it rains. I don't like fat, lazy; Mediterranean light.") Serra was deeply grateful to Leo Castelli, who became his dealer in 1969, stood by him after the Minneapolis accident, and kept giving him annual shows even though he had trouble selling his work, but the person he says he owes the most to is Alexander von Berswordt- Wallrabe, his German dealer, with whom he has worked since 1975. Von Berswordt's connections gave Serra high-level ac- cess to German steel mills (his father- in -law was a director of Krupp), and his tireless advocacy led to many commis- sions. It was at von Berswordt's gallery in Bochum, moreover, that Serra met Clara Weyergraf: a German art histo- rian and Mondrian scholar, with whom he began living in 1977 and whom he married in 1981. Serra's mother had committed suicide a month before he ::. J <> '.. " :fl; L ; '.;:. ' . ' JJ ; } 2 '#: ?'....3:::!: ;J.. .. ._. þ . . ' , . " t" , .'! . \ , J ' , à . " r: ; . . .:ì<l t ; :.!, J ' . '\i. >.1 - . \ ) met Clara, and Serra thinks this had a lot to do with his finally managing to form a stable relationship. "When your mother commits suicide, it pretty much changes your relation to women," he said. "Be- fore, I don't think I could have been as open or as vulnerable." Serra also told me that his mother's suicide, which nobody in the family could explain, had "pretty much conflicted the relationships" be- tween him and his two brothers. He oc- casionally sees his younger brother, Rudy; an artist who teaches sculpture at Rutgers, but for the past twenty-five years he has had virtually no contact with Tony; in San Francisco. Although he would continue to set sculptures into natural landscapes, as he had done with the Pulitzer piece, Serra preferred to work in urban settings. His ideal site was a place with a "density of traffic flow," like the traffic island facing the train station in Bochum, where, in 1977, he and von Berswordt managed to install a vertical steel-plate piece called "Terminal." In the early eighties, he was offered three such sites in downtown Manhattan. It was a terrific opportunity , ! , .t I ì I ; ;; ,,' <'. '. r t t i } ::: [I: .} j i I ..... . i .-::--::.; ....;:: ;:.;", D ,.......)> ... ..yv..........' ,.-J "I'm sorry-you have the wrong language. "